Murder in Mind

A thoroughly realistic interpretation of how Hypnosis can be really done. The plots (which I am not going to spoil by detailing here) are well worth watching the whole movie for. I saw this movie on cable one night by accident and bought it on VHS shortly afterwards as I was impressed by it. Any hypnosis fanatics out there MUST SEE this movie. Without a doubt it is the best around.

A number of reviews of this film mention "late night" and I think it's quite suitable for that kind of viewing. That's how and where I found it. I happened to be sick as a dog with a bad cough/cold, spending the overnight in a hotel not far from work due to a snow/ice storm that prevented me from driving home. Waking up in the middle of the night to calm my cough, I turned on the TV somewhere just after this film had recently started on a cable channel.

The story was off-balanced, weaving in and out of alternate realities, memories, hypnosis, and an overarching crime drama. It seemed a total mess, yet like a train wreck, it made me want to keep watching. Unfortunately, the ravages of my cold had me drifting off back to sleep before I could see where it was all leading.

That led me to wanting to find a re-broadcast or find it on home video. The best I could do in the early age of DVDs was to locate a VHS tape of it to finally see it all the way through. It made a lot more sense when I watched the whole thing, though it's still not what you'd call a great movie.

Still, something about it raises it above other 'bad' movies, so I've rated it a perhaps generous 7 out of 10 for its fascination factor.

Someone should teach the people who made this movie that there is a difference between "presenting multiple twists" and "screwing the audience over". They even use hypnosis as a tool to cover up the plot holes; whenever they can't find their way into or out of a scene, they just say "she is regressing to her past now" or "she's snapping out of it now", and they think that explains everything. This movie is a dishonest cheat and in the last 20 minutes becomes a full-blown fiasco. (*1/2)

Confused murder suspect cannot remember if she murdered her rich husband.

Against the better judgment of hard-bitten "throw the book at her and save tax-payers' money" type police department, smooth psychologist/hypnotist (Nigel Hawthorne) helps her to relive the night of the murder by means of regression into her past.

However, as she relives life with her husband she begins to notice that lots of details don't quite match her memories. What really happened?

This is NOT a fantastic film, I wouldn't pay money to see it in a cinema, for example. The depiction of hypnosis is bizarre enough to initially seem quite funny.

Once you get over that rather shaky plot device though, the various layers of reality brought up by the hypnosis are quite interesting in a "what is reality?" way. It reminded me the teensiest little bit of "Memento" and even though it was late at night I ignored the film's more pretentious angles and sat through the entire thing. Mainly to see why the memory discrepancies occurred and so on.

The lighting and photography are also quite nice.

I caught this one on cable and I was very surprised. Steady direction and some good performances accent a twisty and very engaging story. This one will keep you up all night thinking about what was real and what wasn't. Check out Jason Scott Lee in the Lou Diamond Phillips role!